Riding in Cars with a Memoirist

Beverly Donofrio, author of Riding in Cars with Boys, talks memoir, Frey, and how memory is shaped into story over at Hippocampus magazine:

What are your thoughts on how the genre has changed over the years?

Bev: I think it’s become more and more artful; it’s constantly stretching its boundaries, morphing into new structures, blurring the lines between genres. I used to think of memoir as the novelization of one’s life. But I don’t think that anymore; the form expands and bends and, although it’s about telling the truth in a narrative form, there’s much free associating and poetry, reportage, essayistic writing, history outside of one’s own that can be woven, or plopped or jack-hammered in.

Amye:What do you think of writers like James Frey, who was discovered to have invented much of his memoir? How important is absolute truth in memoir?

Bev: I think James Frey should be shot. And his editor imprisoned or at least fined. I read that book and knew within fifty pages it was fiction. I do not believe his editor didn’t know that too. I think he should be made to give every penny he earned to Pen International or some worthy writers organization for making us all so embarrassed at how easy it is to lie and have it be perceived as true—and for shamelessly portraying himself in his book as such a macho. Please. On the other hand, like all shit storms, it has its positive side. It’s forced a discussion about what one can legitimately do in a memoir. Although one tries to tell the truth in order to make a story readable, one must choose what is told and what omitted, enforce a structure, a story arc, impose meaning on raw life. One compresses time and recreates scenes from memory, and whole swaths of dialogue. At least I do. I may remember a key line or two but for the rest of it, I ask myself, “What did I and everyone else there probably say?” Once I begin writing, I believe that what I wrote is very likely what I now remember. I realize this may be delusional but I don’t tell out and out lies, and I don’t make scenes up from whole cloth, and I try really hard not to make myself into someone better or worse than I am and not to make others different from how I truly see them. But, as we know, vision, perception, memory are all selective whether we want it to be or not.